Science gone WILD!

Students from Willits schools brought in their Willits Science Fair projects to set up at the Community Center Tuesday morning. Coordinator Sharon Hanna held students at the door, letting in one group at a time and directing them to their proper places on the rapidly filling tables.

"We've got 246 regular projects," Hanna said, those submitted by the third-graders through high-school seniors eligible for ribbons, "and six projects from pre-Kindergarten to second grade."

Judging took place Tuesday afternoon, and full results will be published in a later Willits News edition. "Gold County Qualifier" ribbon-winners in Willits will be eligible to show at the countywide Science Fair, March 24 at Mendocino College in Ukiah.

The public is invited to view the Science Fair projects from 8:30 a.m. to 7 p.m. today (Wednesday, February 29) and from 8:30 a.m. to 3 p.m. on Thursday, March 1.

Students from Willits High School walked over with their projects in hand Tuesday morning, and other students were delivered via school bus.

Hannah Friend, in the eighth-grade life sciences class at Baechtel Grove Middle School, did a project entitled "Mnemonic Memory"; she concluded from her experimental procedures that using mnemonics does improve the ability to remember.

One of the mnemonics Friend used to test spelling of the word "laugh" was: "Laugh And You Get Happy."

Retired teacher Charlotte Oding, a volunteer at the Science Fair, said she used mnemonics often in her classroom. One example she cited was teaching the difference between "desert" and "dessert." "Dessert has two s's, and you wouldn't mind having two desserts," Oding laughed.

One project by three students from the BGMS life sciences class, Will Smith, Rex Smith and Price Runberg, asked the question: "Does hip-hop music affect the vertical jump height of middle-school basketball players?" Test results showed 15 out of 20 test subjects jumped higher with hip-hop music than without. "These results tell us that athletes involved in any sport that involves vertical jumping might want to listen to hip-hop/rap music before or during their sport. It could pump up the crowd and the players, too."

Eighth-grader Trysten Siddons of the BGMS life sciences class did a project titled "Egg Shells on Acid," exploring how the shells of raw eggs react to certain acids: vinegar and lemon juice. When Siddons put a raw shelled egg in vinegar, the liquid fizzed, the egg shell became more clear than white and, over a few days, the egg "grew vastly in size" and the level of the liquid decreased, so Siddons concluded the egg was absorbing the vinegar. When she put a raw shelled egg in lemon juice, however, Siddons concluded that the egg did not absorb the lemon juice, because the egg did not grow in size and the level of the liquid did not go down.